Spry describes what was known about the prairies in the late 1850s and why the British government accepted Palliser's proposal to dispatch a team to the area between Lake Superior and the Pacific Coast. She explains what the expedition learned during its three years, offering at the same time an initmate understanding of these men and their perspective on the region. Much more than the story of a scientific survey, The Palliser Expedition provides a revealing look at the western interior in the last years of the Old Northwest before it became home to countless thousands of homesteaders.